Saron Group

Khuolneichawi, with her hand raised, is a member of the Saron Group. She is 46 years old and lives with her husband and five children (three daughters and two sons) in a rented house. Her husband is engaged in a timber business in small holdings. In order to supplement the family income and before the group came into existence, she did weaving and sold vegetables. Having to take care of the children in addition to the household chores, she found it difficult to continue her weaving and selling vegetables activities.

With her first loan and support from her family members, she partitioned and extended their sitting room into a tea hotel. With good faith, she asked her landlord to allow her to construct a fireplace, which is required for a tea stall. Improving steadily in due course, her tea stall has become a common place to entertain for the young and old. She serves tea, puri and a variety of traditional items with many delicacies made from rice grain.

She wants a nursing career for her daughters and she wants the boys to choose the military as their career. She plans to enroll her eldest daughter who is now 20 years old, in a reputable nursing school. She also longs to have a home of her own and she, along with her husband, needs to save for a couple of years more to buy a housing plot and build a house.

She is requesting another loan to renovate her tea stall. She plans to use the loan to stock milk powder, sugar and tea leaves and spend the remainder to increase her stock of charcoal and firewood, both used for cooking purposes.

In 2010, she joined the group of five like- minded tribal women from Churachanpur, in the state of Manipur, which is in the northeastern part of India and called the group SARON. They guide and help one another to empower themselves undertaking different means of generating incomes.
Likewise, the rest of the group members are making steady improvement. They need another loan to increase their inventory as the festival season is approaching. The group members' activities include trading livestock to the butcher, selling beetle nut leaves and selling garments to wear.

Additional Information

More information about this loan

This loan is part of WSDS's effort to reach some of the most underserved parts of India's troubled northeast region, where there is very poor penetration of both formal and informal financial services. By supporting this loan, you are enabling access to finance for women living in some of India's most remote areas.

Important note about this loan

Due to Indian government regulations, if you fund this loan, you will not be repaid for at least 3 years. This borrower will likely repay your loan much sooner than that, in which case, the Field Partner may re-loan your funds to help other local borrowers. We want you to be aware of this minimum 3-year waiting period and the associated risks before making a loan to Indian borrowers on Kiva. Learn More >

About WSDS-InitiateWSDS-Initiate is an inclusive nonprofit that works with women across all tribes and minority communities in Manipur, located in the remote northeast region of India. Most organizations concentrate their work in the plains region of Manipur, but WSDS is among the very few organizations serving women in the isolated hills. Political unrest and frequent economic blockades in the area make it very difficult to provide services, resulting in Manipur having the lowest penetration of financial services in the country.

This is a Group Loan

In a group loan, each member of the group receives an individual loan but is part of a larger group of individuals. The group is there to provide support to the members and to provide a system of peer pressure, but groups may or may not be formally bound by a group guarantee. In cases where there is a group guarantee, members of the group are responsible for paying back the loans of their fellow group members in the case of delinquency or default.

Kiva's Field Partners typically feature one borrower from a group. The loan description, sector, and other attributes for a group loan profile are determined by the featured borrower's loan. The other members of the group are not required to use their loans for the same purpose.